“Local sources reported recently that the plaintiff had amended her complaint to blame algae as well.” [Lowering the Bar; earlier here and here].
Archive for November, 2009
U.K.: “Health and safety snoops to enter family homes”
Reads like a parody: “Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.” [Times Online]
New at Point of Law
Stories you may be missing if you’re not following our sister site:
- Administration now seeks to take credit for med-mal reform as part of health care plan. How believably? (related here, here, here, here, etc.)
- Also related, if less closely: health care bill packed with goodies for labor;
- Trial lawyers continue push in Congress to restore minimally demanding notice pleading standard by overturning Supreme Court’s Iqbal, Twombly decisions;
- Imprisoned exec of Union Bank of Switzerland wants billions as whistleblowing bounty for assisting federal tax investigators;
- “Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice” — the NYT coverage;
- “New Connecticut Law Tries to Trip Up ‘Runners’ and the Lawyers Who Hire Them”; Connecticut AG Blumenthal to push mandatory hospital error disclosure;
- Third-party litigation finance is getting more controversial;
- “The ethics counsel to the New York state senate told senators to hand-deliver ethics filings, rather than mailing them, to avoid coverage under the federal mail fraud statute.”
- More on public pension funds, securities class-action lawyers, and campaign contributions.
Kindle not helpful enough to blind users
So disabled-rights groups are pressuring universities to spurn the popular reading device [Al Tompkins/Poynter]
How to become a legend in law firm marketing
One way is to leave onlookers reeling at your ads’ tastelessness, as happened with one Texas criminal defense law firm. [Above the Law, A Public Defender, Mark Bennett, Scott Greenfield] Update: followup at Above the Law.
When they sue the wrong person
When the wrong defendant is named in a civil complaint — wrong in the sense of being “different guy with the same name” — you might think it would be relatively routine to order the complainant to compensate the bewildered target. But it’s actually unusual enough to rate news coverage. [Jim Dwyer, “Hello, Collections? The Worm Has Turned,” New York Times]
Update: Continental pilots’ sham divorces
A federal judge has dismissed the airline’s suit against pilots seeking to reclaim pension outlays arising from what it said were paper divorces followed by remarriages to the same spouse. Still pending are the pilots’ suits against Continental for wrongful dismissal and invasion of privacy stemming from the airline’s investigation of the episode. [ABA Journal; earlier here and here]
Getting Overlawyered posts in your Outlook inbox
I’m not a Microsoft Outlook user, but this advice from Volokh.com sounds as if it should work for this site as well.
Copyrighting currency?
C’mon, Canada [Coleman; originally Eric Johnson, Pixelization]
“Milan Prosecutors Request Jail Sentence for Google Executives”
Bloomberg reports that the trial in Italy is going forward
on charges related to a clip uploaded to Google Video in 2006.
The clip was created and posted on the Web by a group of students at a Turin school, who filmed themselves bullying a disabled classmate. Google says that it removed the video as soon as it was notified and that it helped Italian police identify those responsible. The trial has been closed to the media at Google’s request.
“Seeking to hold neutral platforms liable for content posted on them is a direct attack on a free, open Internet,” Google spokesman William Echikson said in June.
More: AP.